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NVIDIA Still Working On PRIME/DMA-BUF Contribution

Phoronix: NVIDIA Still Working On PRIME/DMA-BUF Contribution

Aaron Plattner at NVIDIA is still working on the open-source "PRIME Helpers" patches for the Linux kernel. This is work towards ultimately better handling PRIME/DMA-BUF for NVIDIA Optimus Technology on Linux...

I hope that ATi also uses this work to handle thier "optimus-like' solution instead of using thier in house solution. If all the drivers can use ONE system for sharing GPU and transfering GPU access, and ALL contribute and improve it, then this system could really become something. As much as people here hate Nvidia and Ati at times, if we could get them to help improve and use it, then we all would benefit.

nVidia Optimus disaster

Maybe nVidia cares because... Valve "asked" them to do it, because their problems with Steam for Linux on nVidia Optimus...

Little of-topic: nVidia Optimus it is disaster even on Windows. It should be simple and working out-of-the-box, but reality is that it generates plenty of problems. Most of them are with not recognised games, but recently it is even with Mozilla Firefox - version 18 is crashing all the times on hardware with nVidia Optimus...http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/946268

I do understand that 2 gpus in one laptop have it's strong points i.e. gaming. But that I don't understand that manufactures stuck them almost every pony market laptops out there(damn, marketing guys great new laptop with two graphics cards and überdüber gtx720m with 2GB ram for more powah...). Hopefully Haswell has strong enough igpu that it does not need other gpu to stick on every laptop outhere.

Maybe nVidia cares because... Valve "asked" them to do it, because their problems with Steam for Linux on nVidia Optimus...

Little of-topic: nVidia Optimus it is disaster even on Windows. It should be simple and working out-of-the-box, but reality is that it generates plenty of problems. Most of them are with not recognised games, but recently it is even with Mozilla Firefox - version 18 is crashing all the times on hardware with nVidia Optimus...http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/946268

Don't I know it, even on Windows I barely get more fps on my nvidia 540m than my i5's gpu when playing tf2. On l4d2 though, my 540m gets 4-5x fps than my i5's gpu. On minecraft, my 540m gets LOWER fps than my i5's gpu.

nVidia Optimus (when it works) is OK for people that play games occasionally and priority for them is long battery life.
But for people that do not care about battery and still wants laptop usable for gaming (like me - it is nightmare (works buggy on Windows, officially doesn't work on Linux). If I could - I would like to buy laptop with nVidia GPU only. The problem is that all better laptops have this annoying Optimus...

What they can't do is to relicence other people's code. Just like Alan Cox can't relicence the blob and make it GPL.

Then why the DMA-Buf code wasn't contributed by nVidia in the first place?! It's not like the Optimus problem wasn't known for few years before! I'm not asking them to open source their blob because I know that they have other companies "precious IP" in there. Thing is, having proprietary code and contributing code to kernel is not mutually exclusive by itself. But they're in love with their proprietary crap and can't see forest for the trees (that if you get 10 competent engineers to solve a problem, 9 of them will solve it in exactly the same way).